Empresas Copec S.A. (COPEC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Empresas Copec 4Q '24 Results Conference Call. Today's presentation and the 4Q '24 earnings release are available on the company's Investor Relations website, investor.empresascopec.cl. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this presentation may include market outlooks and forward-looking statements, which are based on the beliefs and assumptions of Empresas Copec's management, and on information currently available to the company. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions because they relate to future events and therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors could also affect the future results of Empresas Copec and could also cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. This presentation contains certain performance measures that have been adjusted with respect to IFRS definitions, such as EBITDA. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Mr. Rodrigo Huidobro, Chief Financial Officer of Empresas Copec. Please go ahead, sir.

Okay. Hello, everyone. Welcome to this webcast where we'll be reviewing the results of the fourth quarter 2024. As usual, I'm going to start by myself today. And at the end of the presentation, for the Q&A session, I'm going to be joined by Mr. Gianfranco Truffello, CFO of Arauco; and Mr. Cristian Palacios, Director of Finance and Investor Relations at Empresas Copec. So having said that, let us start by reviewing the most important highlights during the quarter. So this is an executive summary that we have prepared for you. In the fourth quarter, we reached an EBITDA of $644 million, which is pretty much in line with the fourth quarter 2023, but down, of course, with respect to the third quarter 2024, basically because of the drop in pulp prices. In terms of forestry, we can see that year-on-year, the EBITDA is very stable and goes up a bit, essentially because of higher volumes in both panels and pulp and also better costs in the case of pulp. Q-on-Q, there's a drop, of course, driven essentially by lower pulp prices. As you all know, pulp prices went down significantly by the last part of the quarter -- last part of the year, in general. In terms of energy, we had a very good year, in general. However, the last quarter showed an EBITDA that was lower, both with respect to the immediately preceding quarter and to the comparable quarter last year. And that was essentially because of the drop in the industrial margin, which is the most volatile part of the margin in fuels. And that was offset, to a certain extent, by a very good performance in terms of volumes and also a very good performance by our [ team ]. In the case of projects and other developments in the quarter, there is progress at Sucuriú that we launched, the Sucuriú project back in September last year. It is progressing according to schedule. We will give some more details further on. Abastible closed the acquisition of the Gasib assets in Spain and Portugal. And we finished a very good year, a very active year, of bond placements in the local market with our last placement for around $96 million in December. In terms of ESG, we continue to make progress in electromobility with our first 100% electric station in Chile, and we were confirmed in 2 very important indexes and rankings worldwide. The most important figures are shown on screen. As I said, $644 million EBITDA for this quarter. That is very much in line with the comparable quarter in 2023, but of course, lower than the immediately preceding quarter. In terms of debt to EBITDA, we closed at 2.6, which is halfway within our desired range. So it's a good starting point for facing projects such as Sucuriú. CapEx amounted to almost $900 million for the quarter, with which we come to a total figure for the year of $2.1 billion, pretty much in line with what we anticipated during the year, adjusted by the acquisition of Gasib in Spain. EBITDA is in line with the year 2023 for the quarter but, of course, lower than the third quarter 2024. Wood products, in general, showed a stable year, a mid-cycle year, and a very good last quarter with $145 million of EBITDA; Copec at $197 million for a very good year, quarter slightly downwards, but all in all, a very good year for energy, and for Copec in particular. Abastible also finishing a good performance throughout the year; and likewise, for Mina Justa with an EBITDA of $266 million, which is up both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. You can see the evolution of EBITDA on screen there. We started the year very well with very high levels of EBITDA generation. And towards the end of the year, we started going down essentially because of the drop in pulp prices. All in all, during the year, we completed an EBITDA of a little bit above $3 billion, and net income of $1.1 billion approx, which is essentially in line with mid-cycle figures. I remember that we had recorded a $2.3 billion EBITDA in the preceding year. And in both 2021 and '22, we had reached $3.7 billion or $3.8 billion. This $3 billion figure that we recorded for 2024 is essentially in line with the mid part of the cycle. Our most important financial ratios are on screen there. You can see cash holdings for a total of $2.3 billion and very well distributed debt maturities for the years to come. Net debt to EBITDA is ending the year at 2.6x, which is, as I said, midway in our desired range of 2 to 3x that we have defined according to our financial policy, so this places us in a good position to face projects which are very demanding in terms of cash and debt such as Sucuriú. Financial ratios down there also shown with a very good performance in the third quarter and fourth quarter, for trailing 12 months and reaching figures of close to 10%. So quite attractive figures here in terms of return on capital employed and EBITDA margins. Deep diving into forestry, we will see here the results recorded by Arauco in this quarter, which is an EBITDA of $408 million, up with respect to the fourth quarter 2023, with a significant increase, which is driven essentially by better operational performance, higher volumes in all divisions. Pulp and wood, in general, showed higher volumes. Also better prices in sawn timber. Pulp prices were pretty much in line with the fourth quarter 2023 and also a very good performance in terms of costs. Together with that, we have a more favorable nonoperating income, which stems basically from the fact that in 2023, we had to record some nonrecurrent effects, some very important ones related to depreciation in Argentina and the foreign currency effects that they yielded on our figures. Pulp ended the year with an EBITDA of $265 million for the quarter, which is essentially in line with the comparable quarter in the year 2023 but, of course, lower than the $339 million that we recorded in the third quarter of 2024. This has to do essentially with the drop that we saw in pulp prices towards the end of the year, which was very abrupt, and that took place in the last few months of the year, over a very short period of weeks. You can see here that in terms of costs, Arauco did very well basically across the board. For most fibers, we had a decrease in costs, both year-on-year and Q-on-Q. Prices went down with respect to the third quarter, as I said, essentially in line with the fourth quarter 2023 and volumes went up significantly with respect to both quarters. Sales volumes went up. You can see the maintenance schedule there as well for the preceding quarters and also for the quarters to come. A brief word about the evolution of pulp prices in the fourth quarter 2024. We have seen a year, in general, of good prices in pulp up until September, October, when we began to see a descent, a very abrupt descent in prices, which very quickly reached a limit of approximately $550 per ton. They stabilized around those levels, which is a level that is higher than what we had seen in previous cycles. And towards the end of the year and also during the first months of this current year, we have seen a slow and gradual pickup in prices. But during fourth quarter 2024, we saw a challenging situation, lower prices and challenging demand. In the case of China, we saw a cautious market, a lot of noise caused by the bankruptcy of a local paper producer, which led to higher demand for imported pulp. Long fiber prices have been stable all around the year and continue to be stable also in the fourth quarter. In Europe, the situation has changed a bit in the preceding months, and we have seen some weakness following many months, as we had commented before, of very strong demand. In this case, we saw the first month of the quarter with a weaker demand, but then towards the end of the year, demand improved driven by higher margins for paper producers. So as a result of all this, short fiber prices decreased at the beginning of the quarter, but then stabilized towards the end of the year. And dissolving pulp was stable, in general, but with some caution towards the end of the year because of seasonality. In the first few months of this year, we have seen a better situation in China. We are seeing demand that is stronger than expected, both before the Chinese New Year and also following the celebrations. In Europe, we still see some weakness. So very different from what we saw some months ago of very strong demand, now we are seeing some weakness in demand in Europe. So prices have -- increases in prices have been difficult to implement during the beginning of the year. In general, there is uncertainty stemming from the tariff situation. Not only in this market, but in all markets, in general, we are seeing uncertainty related to the tariff situation. Prices in China, however, as I mentioned before, have rebounded a little bit from the lows of $550 that we reached towards the end of the year last year. And we are now standing -- by the end of February, we're standing at $580 approximately for prices in China. Long fiber, very stable, as I said, and more than $200 above short fiber. Woods and panels ended quite a good year with an EBITDA of $145 million, a little bit above the fourth quarter of 2023 and also way above the third quarter of 2024. So a good quarter, in general, for wood products. This was a stable year for wood products, and we reached an EBITDA of somewhere around $500 million, which is sort of an average historical cycle EBITDA for this division. Stability, in general, towards the end of the year. We saw a drop in prices for panels year-on-year, but a recovery in volumes. And we also saw a drop in volumes with respect to the immediately preceding quarter. But all in all, as we have said before, it was a year of stability in this segment. Regarding the outlook for the months to come, there is some noise in our most important market, North America. In general, there's caution because of the tariff situation, uncertainty because of the tariff situation. So there's a sort of a wait-and-see mode, in general. Demand, therefore, has gone down, and we have seen some more supply, in general, also in the different segments. So for MDF, PB and remanufactured products, we have seen slower demand, increased supply and probably with a different situation for plywood where things look better. But in general, the common note here for all markets is caution and uncertainty because of the tariff situation. Latin America, with more stability than we have seen before, so stability in Brazil; Chile, basically unchanged; and Argentina, better than in the preceding months, basically because of a reduced impact of recession. The other markets, which represent a lower percentage of our total sales, in Asia, in general, we saw a weakness related to seasonality because of the Chinese New Year, probably expecting some potential recovery eventually for the months to come; stability in Australia; and a positive trend in Europe driven by lower rates and some closures of supply. That's it for the main comments regarding forestry. And now moving on to energy. As I said before, we closed a very good year for Copec consolidated and also for energy as a whole. We recorded a total EBITDA for the energy division of $1.2 billion for the year as a whole, which is a good figure, historically speaking. For this quarter, particularly for Copec, we recorded an EBITDA of CLP 197 billion, which is a bit lower than the comparable quarter last year, which has to do essentially with a lower industrial margin. And this is a volatile part of the business as we have counted before. And in this particular case, we had a drop in that portion of EBITDA, together with an unfavorable inventory revaluation effect. All of that offset, to some extent, with a very good performance of the gas station channel in Chile. Together with that, we had a drop in nonoperating income. And when comparing net income, there's a significant drop with respect to the fourth quarter 2023, which has to do essentially with the nonrecurring effect of the Mapco sale of the assets that we had in the U.S. that we sold in the last part of 2023. That effect, nonrecurring, of course, was recorded in the fourth quarter 2023, and that's not there anymore. So that's the reason for the drop in net income for Copec. In operational terms, we continue to do well with a 6% amazing increase in gas stations volumes, offset, to some extent, by a drop in the industrial channel, which is much more volatile, as we said before, and which was down by 3.5% in this particular quarter. Terpel finishing a very good year as well with an EBITDA for the quarter, which is somewhat lower year-on-year, but still a very good figure, COP 422 billion and a net income of COP 109 billion. All in all, as you can see in the evolution of EBITDA in the graph in the bottom right corner, a very stable EBITDA generation and also at very high levels. And this is driven by higher volumes, in general. Especially in the Colombian market, we saw an attractive increase in volumes, a favorable inventory revaluation effect in the case of Colombia, unlike what we recorded in Chile, and also a very good performance of the lubricants business. And this is based essentially on a performance that has been gradually improving in lubricants since we took hold of the assets sold by ExxonMobil some years ago when we became the sole owner of the lubricants assets of ExxonMobil in Colombia, Chile, Copec and Ecuador. We are the sole distributors of those assets, and we have been gradually making improvements in that channel to reach the current very attractive performances in this segment. In the case of Abastible, we have also completed a very good year with an EBITDA of CLP 38 billion, which is up with respect to the fourth quarter 2023. In general, a good operational performance and attractive growth in volumes and also very significant and attractive improvements in the logistics of gas supply that Abastible has gone ahead with. So all in all, a good year for Abastible, offset, to some extent, by an effect in taxes driven by foreign exchange effects. But in general, a very good year and quarter for Abastible. You can see here the operational figures for Abastible with attractive rates of growth in all markets: 10% in Colombia, 11% in Ecuador, 7% in Peru and 1.5% in Chile, so growing all across the board in some markets, growing in a very attractive way, at high rates, and basically driven by the very good performance of the bulk segment, having to do with the new energy offerings that Abastible is going ahead with and presenting to its clients. And that has driven a significant growth in the industrial and bulk market, in general. In relation to our other investments, Sonacol, as usual, very stable, some decrease in net income for the quarter driven by nonoperating income essentially. Igemar, which is our fishing division, completing a year that was much more challenging than the year before and therefore, with a negative result. In the case of Metrogas and AGESA, our natural gas-related companies, we saw a nonrecurrent foreign exchange effect in Metrogas and a very stable performance in AGESA. Regarding Mina Justa, once again, a very good quarter and a very good year for Mina Justa. We had anticipated a higher cash cost for the year, in general, and that took place during the first 3 quarters. But during the fourth quarter, we found a very productive site and the company produced, based on a very productive site, which brought down cash costs significantly. This is probably nonrecurrent. So next year, we're going to go up again to levels of around $1.4, $1.5 per pound in terms of cash cost. But for this particular quarter, we had a very good level of $1.2 per pound cash cost together with an attractive pricing scenario that all yielded -- and also good physical sales that all yielded an EBITDA of $266 million for the quarter, which is up on the fourth quarter 2023. Net income is also $155 million, very attractive levels, in general. The company, for the third year in a row, completes an EBITDA, which is close to $800 million. So very smooth operation, very good performance of Cumbres Andinas consistently. Remember, this is a company that we do not consolidate and where we hold a 40% stake. So it is registered in our net income. It is reported as equity income with this 40%. Those are the main figures for the quarter. And moving on to the main developments. Some important things to highlight here. We are moving on with our Sucuriú projects. project of our subsidiary Arauco that was announced by the end of September. So it is progressing according to schedule with a 3.7% physical progress and a 2.7% of total CapEx already incurred. Approximately $130 million already incurred, which is 2.7% of the total CapEx expected for this project. Some facilities already implemented and open, dining area, communication towers and entrance at Casa Arauco, which is intended for fluid information to the local community. And a capital injection from Empresas Copec to Arauco was already completed by the end of last quarter, by the end of the fourth quarter 2024, $300 million already injected from Empresas Copec to Arauco. This is also according to the plan of contributing up to $1.2 billion from Empresas Copec to Arauco in order to contribute to the financing of the Sucuriú project. Abastible closed the acquisition of the Gasib assets and shares in Spain and Portugal. This was a EUR 275 million operation in terms of enterprise value. The rationale for the operation was basically a very attractive asset, this is a leading player in the unregulated LPG segment in Spain, attractive expected returns, financially speaking. So this is an asset that should have stable returns, returns that are attractive, especially when adjusted by risk, stable cash flows expected over time; but probably, most importantly, strong synergies expected in terms basically of energy transition. So there's a lot of room to transfer good practices from Latin America to Spain, especially from Spain to Latin America. And considering the fact that this is a market -- Spain and Portugal is a market that is very similar to Lat Am market, culturally speaking, but also their markets that are several years ahead of Latin America in terms of energy transition. So we see a very interesting space for learning, for exposing Abastible to this energy transition evolution and be able to copy and to transfer best practices in terms of energy transition from Iberia to Latin America and with potential associations with local players that can be also transferred to Latin America. So all in all, we deem this a very attractive acquisition. We completed a very active year in terms of our presence in the local bond markets with total placements of around $800 million for bonds in the local market during 2024 for Empresas Copec at the consolidated level, $360 million placed by the parent company and $440 million placed by subsidiaries, majority of those was placed by Arauco. This included sustainable and green bonds. And the last issuance took place during the last quarter, in December last year, for approximately $96 million, also with an attractive rate of issuance. Regarding ESG, we continue to make progress in several fronts. We completed the first 100% electric station in Chile. It is located in Santiago with the capacity to charge up to 6 vehicles simultaneously and compatibility with a wide array of electric cars, including a battery exchange area for motorcycles under the brand Gogoro. And also quite especially this is quite symbolic as well of sustainability. This is, I guess, an electric station that is entirely made from Arauco's wood. You can see in the picture there. And finally, Empresas Copec was confirmed in 2 important indexes and rankings worldwide in terms of ESG. First of them is the Dow Jones Sustainability Index Chile, where we were confirmed for the ninth consecutive year. And as you all know, this is a ranking and an index that measures performance in key aspects of sustainability, including social impact and good business practices. And the second being the S&P's Global Sustainability Yearbook 2025, where Empresas Copec was positioned among the world's top 5 in the oil and gas sector. So very good position. And this has to do with companies that have incorporated sustainability as a core axis in their long-term strategies. So very good news to be included in this S&P Sustainability Yearbook 2025. Having said all that, those are the figures and highlights that we have prepared for you. So I'm going to invite Gianfranco, please, and Cristian to come in and join me for the Q&A session. You can continue posting your questions through the chat in the Zoom platform. So thank you very much, and let us move to the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions]

Everyone, I'm going to start with the Q&A section for this webcast. The first question comes from Henrique Marques at Goldman Sachs. He has 3 questions. The first one in forestry. Regarding the Sucuriú project, there are 2 fiber lines, right? Is the plan to start both of them at the same time? Or are you going to start one line and then the second line later? Gianfranco, please?

Okay. Thanks for the question. I mean probably some confusion. It's 1 mill. Originally, we announced that we have a site for 2 lines, 2 investments, but this is 1 mill that has 1 recovery boiler, but 3 different lines of dryers and preparing of the product. But of course, we're going to start the 3 lines of the 1 mill at the same time in the last quarter of 2027. A second production mill is an option that we have for the future, but we haven't decided on that investment and probably, it should take some years to consolidate the production in Sucuriú before analyzing the idea of constructing another mill.

The second one is on Mina Justa, Rodrigo. Costs were much lower during the 4Q. How sustainable are these costs? And could you give us some update on the expansion project of Mina Justa?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Henrique. As I said during the presentation, this is probably nonrecurrent. So we were able to produce from a site, a specific part of the mine, which had very good grades in this particular quarter, and that gave way to this very low cash costs, as low as $1.2 per pound on average during the quarter. Going forward, we expect to return to the levels -- pretty much the levels that we had in 2023, not in 2024 when we had higher levels on average because of the lower grade, but rather to levels of around $1.4, $1.5 per pound for 2025. Those are the expectations right now.

And the third one is on the fishing division.

Sorry, there's also an expansion at the Mina Justa mine. You mentioned that. Yes, that's a project that is going to be up for approval by the Board of Mina Justa and Cumbres Andinas, potentially during the first few months of this year. So the project is still being analyzed. This is an expansion project that will allow the mine to expand its life of mine for 5 years approximately with an additional production of 500,000 tons. And the management is working on the last details to have it up for evaluation by the Board during the first few months of this year. So most likely, there will be some news regarding that in the months to follow.

Okay. And the third one is on fishing, a division that was delivering negative EBITDA for the last quarter, last 2 quarters. How should we look at the profitability of this business going forward? And if you can provide an update on this division.

Yes. Well, the fishing division is a very volatile business, in general, because it is subject to some specificities of the industry, having to do with the taxes that are available in a particular quarter or a particular year. And that, in turn, has to do with the biomass and the quotas that are available for a particular period. That is all very volatile. Together with that, the prices of the products are commodity prices, both the fishmeal and the fish oil are subject to cycles depending on demand essentially from China and the large markets and also availability of fish. So it's very hard to project. As you said, the last quarter has been negative in terms of EBITDA. But in 2023, we had a very good year in terms of EBITDA when we recorded approximately $90 million for the division as a whole compared to the $40 million or so that we reported for the year as a whole in 2024. So I would say that's a reasonable range to have in mind, $40 million to $90 million. But within that range, it's very hard to give a specific figure.

The next one comes from Tathiane Candini, JPMorgan. Gianfranco, if you can comment a little bit what is the strategy for the wood panels unit in Brazil. After the sale of some lands in the country, what is the plan for the region?

Well, we sold the forestry in Paraná that supplied, in some part, the mills in Brazil last year. But we were already buying from third parties, and we continue to do that. And there has been no problem. The mills are making money. So they're still very competitive, and we plan to stay there and continue to supply our clients for the time being, that they are able to compete even without owning the forest where we thought that it was in better hands with Klabin. That's why we sold them at a very good price. So we'll continue to stay there and competing with the 4 mills that we have in Paraná.

And regarding Sucuriú. You had a very competitive CapEx for the project given its size. Do you see any cost pressure on the project at this point? We saw some news on supply chain inflation and pressure recently.

Not yet. I mean we have closed most of the contracts. And in average, I think we are on budget. We are starting construction. We are almost 4% advanced in the project. And we have had good news regarding the exchange rate compared to the planning that we did. So we were able to hedge part of that. So we are having an advantage in terms of that most of the costs are denominated in reais. So in that sense, we are better than expected. But at this point, we haven't seen any other cost overruns.

Next one comes from [ Joselito Vergara ]. Rodrigo, could this weakness in Empresas Copec industrial segment due to a tougher competitive landscape driven by the entry of new market participants?

Well, this is a very competitive market, and we have large multinationals that are competing against Copec, and this has always been so. But I wouldn't say there's a clear trend of any player gaining or losing market share. Market shares have been stable over time, and we have managed to stick to our historical market share. But it is tough, it is competitive, especially in the industrial segment. What usually happens there is that, of course, there is some volatility coming from the fact that you can win or lose a certain contract and contracts are very significant in volumes. But there's also some volatility stemming from the fact that there are clients that have a volatile consumption. For example, the power generation sector, which is a large consumer of fuels. In that particular case, volumes are very volatile. So rather than a clear trend in certain players gaining or losing market share, I would say that has to do with the usual volatility of consumption within the market segment.

Thank you, Rodrigo. Then Alfonso Salazar at Scotiabank. Are you planning to slow down investments in electromobility? Has your strategy changed given slower EV adoption relative to previous expectations? And also how the investments in Sucuriú will affect expansions in other projects and business divisions?

Well, regarding the last part of the question, Sucuriú is a very large project. And of course, we have to maintain a very strong financial discipline here, and we are also bounded by our financial policy. As you know, we have committed to a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of between 2 and 3x as a 5-year average and never to go over 4x. So of course, that presents a challenge when faced with projects as large as Sucuriú. And that requires us to be very disciplined. And most probably, we will not be undergoing any other major investments while we are building Sucuriú. That makes a lot of sense. Minor investments potentially, if we have room. Major projects, I would say that that's very unlikely. Regarding electromobility, we are following a strategy that has to do with preparing ourselves for facing the different potential energy scenarios. That strategy consists of opening up options. And one of the options we are opening up is the electromobility segment, of course. We have worked in becoming a leader in electromobility. We have the largest network, one of the largest in South America, the largest in Chile. We are the most important providers of electricity to city buses and to the industrial segments as well. But all in all, the strategy that we have thought of to prepare for this scenario, one of the virtues it has is that we are prepared for different scenarios and also that we can either speed it up or slow it down depending on what we see happening in the markets, both nationally and internationally speaking. I wouldn't say there's a clear trend yet regarding electromobility, but we, of course, will be monitoring what happens in the market, both within Chile and abroad, and we are prepared to follow the market and to stick to our leadership position, whatever the reason of expansion of this segment finally is.

Thank you, Rodrigo. Another one from Henrique Marques. Price hikes were being implemented very smoothly during the last couple of months. But it looks like it won't be that easy going forward. What is the reason behind that change?

Well, the beginning of the year started with price increases in short fiber and long fiber. And the case basically was because of the bankruptcy of Chenming in China, which is a major paper supplier, and that created space for increased margins in other paper producers in China, and that helped tighten up a little bit the market and helped push up increases of $20 in January and then in February. Also in long fiber, there was more space because of the lack of new production. So we increased $20 and then $10 in February. Reaching March, it was a little bit more difficult and everyone started postponing the decision until the Pulp Week that is going to be held in Shanghai in the 19th of March. So I think during that time, there will be negotiations regarding potential changes in prices. In our case, during January and February, we were able to sell the whole volume at the new prices. So we're very happy with that. And we'll see what happens in March. Of course, the situation depends a lot on the status of the Chenming mills, if they're going to restart or not and at what pace. And we will have news, of course, after the Shanghai Pulp Week.

Thank you, Gianfranco. We have Rodrigo Godoy, CrediCorp. Could you please tell us how much is the liquid fuels inventory revaluation for both Terpel and Copec during 4Q and for the whole year, please?

During 4Q, we had a negative effect, which was not very significant. It was less than $10 million negative. And for the year, as a whole, it was also quite -- let me look for that figure, and we'll get back to that.

And then could you elaborate on your preliminary thoughts about the potential impact of the measures announced by the U.S. concerning import duties on Copec's operations, particularly on pulp and wood products business?

Okay. The situation is changing every day. I mean we have seen the U.S. government announcing tariffs and then backing down and postponing for months at a time. Of course, it's going to have an impact in the whole economy. Nobody wants more closed trade. So that will have an impact on commodities probably more in the long term. In the short term, the tariffs that are implemented against Canada will have an impact on the price of wood and wood products in the U.S. That somehow could help us in the short term because we have a lot of production capacity in the U.S., especially MDF and particle board. We have a couple of mills in Canada that could be affected in the share of their exports to the U.S. In Mexico, we have production, but we sell only locally, so it shouldn't be a problem there. But the medium impact could be on construction in the U.S. If the prices of raw materials and wood start to increase, of course, it will have an impact on demand, and that could have a negative impact on the demand for construction products. But I think it's too soon to tell. Everything is connected, and also we will see what happens in the realignment of prices and demand. Of course, we're going to look for the best interest in the medium term for Arauco, and we'll try to change our pricing to accommodate our demand for our mills in the U.S. and Canada.

Thank you, Gianfranco. And we have Cristóbal Mery of BTG. He has 2 questions. Could you comment on your planned CapEx for the year? That's number one. And second, what can we expect for Abastible with the consolidation of the Gasib assets in terms of incremental LPG sales or EBITDA for this 2025?

Yes. One question that was pending was inventory effect for the year, which was negative, somewhere around between $30 million and $35 million negative for the total year, pretty much in line with the previous year. And then regarding CapEx that you mentioned, CapEx expected for year 2025, we're still working on the numbers there. We usually give them out, the more precise figure, we give them out in our shareholders' meeting, which is going to take place in April. But just a preliminary and very rough figure should be somewhere around $3 billion, which is basically composed of around $800 million to $900 million, which is maintenance across the different divisions, $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion are scheduled for Sucuriú, for the industrial portion of Sucuriú, and the remaining is basically made up of different concepts, one of them being, of course, plantations, both in Brazil and abroad; some expansions, potential expansions, in the different divisions; the projects that Arauco is already undergoing in panels in Chile and Mexico; and several efficiency projects, which, of course, may or may not be carried out during the year, depending on the attractiveness of the projects and also on the financial situation of the company. But the gross figure consolidated should be roughly EUR 3 billion. And then you mentioned Abastible, right, Abastible, the effect of Gasib. Abastible is basically going to add somewhere around 204,000, 215,000 tons to its total sales. And the current figure is roughly 1.9 million. So that's a little more than probably 10% to 15% that Abastible has added to its total physical sales. The EBITDA that it's going to add is probably a little more, in proportional terms, a little more than that, essentially because margins tend to be higher in Spain and Portugal than the average of margins that we are facing in Lat Am. So that's an initial rough estimate of the effect on Abastible.

Thank you, Rodrigo. And we have the last question here, [ Marco Sumera ]. Do you have any information on Chenming? What is the current situation? Is the operation operating at full capacity at the mill?

Well, Chenming is a company and has different mills in China. What we know is that they went bankrupt and the Chinese government assigned administration to another private company which was trying to control the situation. I mean, trying to restructure the debt and trying to start operating the mills again, and finally to maintain the jobs in the different regions where they have the mills. There's not a lot of information about what's going on. We know that some of the mills are restarted, but not all of them. It's not easy. But I guess it will be the topic of discussion during the Shanghai Pulp Week to get more information about what's going on there. But it's not very clear. But I don't think -- I'm quite sure there's not 100% capacity, if somewhere between 0 and 100 will be the production. But it's going to be a question to be answered during the Shanghai Pulp Week.

Okay. Thank you, Rodrigo and Gianfranco. I'll turn it back to the operator right now, and thank you all.

Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer section. At this time, I would like to turn the floor back to Mr. Rodrigo Huidobro for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you all for attending today. Thank you, Cristian and Gianfranco for joining me. And we expect to meet with you again in the first 2 weeks of May for taking a look at the results of the first quarter 2025. Thank you very much. Good afternoon.

This concludes today's presentation. You may disconnect now, and have a nice day.